How Fast Are You Going?

“I don’t know how you do it,” a friend told me. “Church, kids, writing.”

“I don’t sleep,” I said, half-joking. (We have a newborn; it’s only half a joke.)

While moving fast, going quickly, and multitasking may be impressive in a world filled with content-creating and service-providing and like-share-click-tweet, they aren’t good. Running at the speed of light, our hair metaphorically on fire, is the opposite of what the gospel calls us to do. Living at a frantic pace is the opposite of what God calls us to. (Plus, multitasking is counterproductive!)

I’ll admit it—I am a chronic do-too-much-er. I don’t often do just one thing at a time. I cook dinner with a podcast going, drive to work while brainstorming a project idea, sit with kids at the park while catching up on scheduling appointments. (I feel bad for the receptionist at my dentist’s office who is as likely to hear “Be careful on the jungle gym!” as “Yes, April 6 at 2 p.m. works great for us!”)

I wrote a whole book about the importance of slowing down, but I struggle to take my own advice. And here’s the thing: at a frenetic pace, we often miss essentials. People. God. The curve of a toddler’s brow that tells us he needs an early nap. The weary set of our boss’s shoulders that reminds us he’s had a long week and to offer encouragement. The achingly beautiful way the sun is setting, an ephemeral gift to us from an everlasting God.

By going too fast, we miss everything.

A great deal needs doing, to be sure. The world is in chaos, families are in turmoil, our planet is wearing out, communities are in pain. We can be tempted to feel the pressing weight of the entire world on our shoulders and run frantically to do all we can. Who will save us if we don’t keep striving—and quickly?

Yet as Eugene Peterson once sagely wrote in his book Tell It Slant,

“When it comes to doing something about what is wrong in the world, Jesus is best known for his fondness for the minute, the invisible, the quiet, the slow—yeast, salt, seeds, light. And manure.”[1]

Mary, Jesus’s mother, understood this slowness. Despite the urgency of her situation when we first meet her in the Gospels—a baby on the way and then a murderous king to flee—she takes the slow road. At the end of the nativity story in Luke 2—shepherds and angels and glory—we read a phrase so simple and beautiful it resounds like the clear peal of a bell: “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19 NIV).

Treasuring? It takes time. Pondering can’t happen in only a moment or two. Mary weaves together the miraculous (Gabriel and the immaculate conception, a betrothal to a good man, and her growing, swelling belly) and the mundane (stable animals, social customs, the bureaucratic red tape of the census that drew them to Bethlehem in the first place) and contemplates them as she would a jewelry box of wondrous gems.

Mary treasured up all these things.

Mary pondered.

What are you pondering and treasuring these days? It’s impossible to do while running or even walking. To ponder and treasure we must sit and drink deeply, allowing the Lord to do his divine and slow and lasting work in our anxious hearts.

Last Christmas we traveled to Los Angeles to see my husband’s family. The day overflowed with all the usual Christmas merriment: Burl Ives, piles of wrapping paper, and kids overstimulated and filled with sugar. The baby needed to nurse—again—and I was low on sleep. Right as we prepared to leave, the kindergartner decided he needed to go to the bathroom again and half the family trooped back inside the house. I was—as always, as ever—in a hurry to get home, to do the next thing, to check at least one more box on my list before bedtime.

Mary treasured up all these things.

Mary pondered.

After several false starts, we finally made it outside to load up the car, the night California-cold with a chilly breeze whipping down from the surrounding hills. God turned my attention to our toddler son, just two and a half years old, as he paused by a slim tree.

My father-in-law came up behind him to help him into the car, but Wilson stopped him, pointing a chubby finger up at the leaves that danced in the night winds.

“Tee!” Wilson exclaimed, his blond curls a-frizz, his Christmas sweater askew. “Tee!”

Mary treasured up all these things.

Mary pondered.

As we drove the winding freeways home that night, the kids dropped off to sleep, one by one, and I realized I was in danger of missing it all. Not each moment of their babyhood (I’m not one of those parents who would tell you to treasure every moment, because some moments are barely survivable and others aren’t treasure-worthy at all) but the miracles and the mundane that happen when following Jesus. Heaven touching earth; God coming down; peace and kindness and wisdom and care.

While Mary’s story often gets relegated to only the Christmas season, it’s worth studying year-round.

Mary treasured Jesus. Mary pondered Jesus.

Are you? Am I?

[1] Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 70.

Courtney Ellis writes and blogs at CourtneyBEllis.com. A speaker, pastor, and author of Uncluttered: Free Your Space, Free Your Schedule, Free Your Soul, she lives with her husband and three littles in southern California. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.